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Darguina fire, August 2022 درقينة · Darguina

Out · last detection 16 Aug 2022, 12:43 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2022 in Darguina, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 228 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 47th largest in Jijel since 2016 (of 110 with a page). Number 33 in Algeria in 2022, of 58.

Compare with…
Burnt area
228ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
14 Aug 2022 – 16 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
14 Aug
2022
Heat detections
9
in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
45MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug16 Aug
16 Aug 2022

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 2022 · 114 MW · 5 15 Aug 2022 · 12 MW · 3 16 Aug 2022 · 8 MW · 1
14 Aug 15 Aug 16 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high
38km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13 ha in 2017, 108 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 109 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Darguina درقينة 14,146 inhabitants · 10.3 km from the centre where it started
    228 ha reached on 14 Aug
    2.7 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Other natural land64 %
  • Mixed forest35 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
14 Aug 34.4 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
15 Aug 32.3 °C 27 % 38 km/h 1.1 mm High 36
16 Aug 31.2 °C 27 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
17 Aug after 31.9 °C 25 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Aug after 26.6 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
19 Aug after 23.9 °C 53 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
20 Aug after 26.1 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
21 Aug after 27.0 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Aug after 26.8 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Aug after 25.4 °C 49 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Aug after 26.9 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Aug after 27.8 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 7 Aug 2022
After · 23 Aug 2022

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 17 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1097 µg/m³
Optical depth1.20
1213141516171819
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 9Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Darguina fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 August 2022 to 16 August 2022 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 August 2022 to 15 August 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 228 hectares (2.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Darguina (228 ha, 2.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Darguina and came within 10.3 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 14 · 1021 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 14 · 1021.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 August 2022 to 15 August 2022. 9 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.